The 11-story One Bethlehem Plaza at 1 W. Broad St. has always enjoyed a sort of dubious distinction of being the biggest and highest-profile building of the city’s short-lived and ultimately scrapped “urban renewal” effort of the 1970s. A steel, brick and glass monolith amid mostly 19th and early 20th Century buildings on the eastern side of downtown, it is the largest building in the city’s North Side core, with nearly 120,000 square feet of office space. On the first floor of this tower sits a storefront that building real estate broker CB Richard Ellis of Allentown hopes to lease to a …

  Back in May, we wrote about the vacant storefront at the once popular Art & Drafting Connection in the Westgate Mall that had been vacant for a couple of years. Not long after that, a temporary purpose was found for the space: The Lehigh Valley Republican Victory Center became a hub for volunteers to meet, pick up signs and make telephone calls on behalf of GOP candidates. On the day before Election Day, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and actor Jon Voight came to the center to thank and fire up volunteers to keep pushing for Mitt Romney to win Pennsylvania. A week later, barely a trace…

  A Historic Downtown storefront that has been vacant since The Morning Call closed its Bethlehem Bureau in 2008 will be home to a new wine bar and lounge by February or March, according to The Express Times. Corked Wine Bar is now planned for the 6,000-square-foot space at 513 Main St., owner Joe Grisafi told the newspaper. As currently planned, the restaurant will hold 160 seats in the restaurant area and 60 seats in the wine bar area, an open kitchen and a private room for parties, the newspaper reported. Plans also call for self-serve machines that can offer measured pours of wine of as …

  LaRose Boutique’s business at 91 W. Broad St. was selling natural and organic bath products and accessories – scrubs, rubs, candles, massage oils and shampoos. The shop still operates, but only online. The storefront is no more. It is closed and vacant. Plaza Realty is looking for a new tenant for its prime piece of real estate along Bethlehem’s Restaurant Row – right next door to the Apollo Grill and across the street from Edge. What goes here Bethlehem? Tell us in the comments.

  Last week, Mayor John Callahan and other officials descended on the old Farr’s shoe store building at the corner of W. Broad and N. New streets to hail the $3.8 million renovation of the 1920s Beaux Arts building as a success. The building looks great and 19 of 24 upscale apartments in the upper three floors are rented. But there is one key missing ingredient: A tenant for the 6,000 square foot corner storefront where shoes used to be sold. As explained in this Express-Times story, a deal to bring an Irish pub to the location has fallen through. But there are still high hopes that another …

  Bethlehem Mayor John Callahan on Tuesday announced that the city plans to lease the Bethlehem Armory and lead an effort to find an adaptive reuse for the building. The brick armory at 301 Prospect Ave., at the corner of Prospect and Second avenues, was built in 1930 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is currently owned by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and, until very recently had been the home of at least one Pennsylvania National Guard unit. The last remaining guardsmen who called the armory home were relocated to the new Easton Readiness Center in Forks …

  The fate of the 91-year-old old Jack Jones Buick dealership building at 325 W. Broad St. will be one of the items under discussion at tonight’s Bethlehem Zoning Hearing Board meeting. Developers Ed Novak and Lou Pektor plan to demolish the building and put up a three-story medical office building in its place. The developers are coming before the Zoning Board to request numerous variances for the project. Among those is a request from relief of the required 40 parking spaces and instead provide a 38-space lot. The developers are also asking for: One off-street loading space. A variance from…

  The Stefko Center shopping center is anchored by the Valley Farm Market and an Aaron’s lease–to-own store. It also, currently, has four vacant storefronts. What goes here Bethlehem? Tell us in the comments section below. According to the property brochure on the Regency Centers Website, the largest open space has 6,000 square feet and lies in between the Dollar Tree and the state Wine & Spirits Store. Another space of more than 5,000 square feet sits between the Aaron’s and the Radio Shack. Spaces of 3,200 and 1,350 square feet are also available for lease. The shopping center lies along …

  Mayor John Callahan is expected to announce this morning a “major new tenant” for 60 W. Broad St. “that will ensure continued growth and diversification of our downtown’s economic base.” According to the e-mail sent by the mayor’s office on Tuesday, the new tenant will occupy 10,000 square feet of space – a significant portion of the four-story 50,000 square foot building that has lately been conspicuously underutilized. Women’s clothing retailer Jane Roncoroni, which has moved a few doors down to 74 W. Broad St, once anchored the retail portion of the building. A spa now occupies a portion…

  The Art & Drafting Connection was for years a popular mom & pop store in the Westgate Mall that offered stationery, office supplies, greeting cards, children’s learning books and custom framing. We didn’t even mention the store’s impressive selection of artists’ supplies including pencils, paints, brushes and pads. Several years back, the store went out of business, leaving a lingering hole in the hearts of its loyal customers and its mall storefront, still vacant after all this time. What goes here, Bethlehem? Tell us in the comment section below. It’s clear that this mall has seen better …

  The Melting Pot is a popular restaurant at 1 E. Broad St. built around the theme of fondue. But two other first floor retail spaces in the same building are currently vacant. And so again we ask, Bethlehem, what goes here? The five-story, mixed-use office and retail building is new construction, built in the last decade or so in the eastern part of the historic downtown at the corner of Broad and New streets. According to the listing posted by ALT Realty, the corner space is a little more than 2,000 square feet and already fitted out for a deli or café. A coffee shop once occupied the …

  Once the building at the northwest corner of W. Broad and N. New streets was known as the place for “Better Shoes by Farr.” Now it’s a building that in the recent past has been renovated to its past 1920s Beaux Arts beauty in need of some new tenants. The building has 6,200 square feet of storefront space along Broad Street and another 6,200 square foot of available space on the ground level. Ashley Development Corp. is also looking for office tenants for the upper floors. What goes here Bethlehem? Tell us in the comments.

  Christmas City Realty promotes its vacant building at 302 E. Third St. with a Website trumpeting a coming SouthSide “renaissance.” “The Lofts at Third and Taylor,” is what they have dubbed the mixed-use building, which has three two-bedroom loft living spaces in addition to a 2,000 square foot storefront. “Bethlehem’s Southside is fast becoming one of the hottest arts and entertainment destinations in the Northeast,” the Website says, mentioning that the space is within walking distance of the Sands Bethlehem Casino, Lehigh University and the Banana Factory. The commercial space has two …

  The vacant storefront and property at 14-18 W. Third St. has been listed for lease for more than three years and been vacant for probably a lot longer than that. But for some smart investor, it could be a gem. It sits across the street from Lehigh Pizza and the Banana Factory along a stretch of street that lies in a heavily traveled area between the Fahy Bridge and the Brodhead Street entrance to the Hill-to-Hill Bridge. The property is also in the Keystone Innovation Zone, which provides a variety of financial incentives – including direct state subsidies and the ability to sell tax …

  The former Wright’s Wallpaper building sits on the northwest corner of Broad Street and 10th Avenue in West Bethlehem. It’s been vacant for … well, we don’t really know. From the outside, it looks like whoever owned the store got out of there in a hurry. Inventory is clearly visible through the floor-to-ceiling windows. What we do know is that the Dietrick Group is offering the space – 2,372 square feet of it – for rent at $17 per square foot per year. The Online listing for Dietrick describes it as a “well-established, proven retail location.” It even has a suggestion: “GREAT for outdoor …

  The former Hard Bean Café at 201 E. Third St. has been vacant for about a year. The storefront space at the northeast corner of Third and Webster streets, is cattycorner from the William Elek Plumbing Building we profiled a few weeks back. We will assume that statistics provided by the city’s Department of Community and Economic Development about the Elek building are the same here: That means 25,000 residents, 9,326 households, 1,128 daytime employees and an annual 2010 consumer spending of $233,181,000 within a mile of this storefront, which, once again, is in the heart of the city’s …

  The former Straub Auto Dealership at the corner of W. Broad Street and 11th Avenue in West Bethlehem is currently up for sale by the Dietrick Group LLC for $1.2 million. The two-story, 8,515-square-foot building sits on a lot with parking that is nearly one-third of an acre. According to Dietrick’s description of the building on-line, it is 72 years old and has central air-conditioning. Within a mile of this building, there are 15,722 residents, an average household income of nearly $60,000 and almost 700 businesses that employ nearly 9,000 people. What business use would fit well with this…

  The storefront at 17 E. Third St. in South Bethlehem was home to Shuze, a very successful shoe and accessory store, until it relocated in the past year to 530 Main St. in the historic North Side downtown. It shares a block with an eclectic mix of retail and businesses including art galleries, a Domino’s pizza, a hookah lounge and a graphic design business. Just a block from the Elek Plumbing building we spotlighted a week ago, it likely has similar surrounding demographics – 25,000 residents, 9,326 households, 1,128 daytime employees and an annual 2010 consumer spending of $233,181,000, …

  The William Elek Limited building at 128 E. Third St. at the corner of Webster Street in South Bethlehem has been vacant since the plumber retired. Within one mile of this 7,500-square-foot building, according to Kathy Vossough, the city’s deputy director of economic development, there are 25,000 residents, 9,326 households, 1,128 daytime employees and an annual 2010 consumer spending of $233,181,000. That's in the heart of the bustling SouthSide arts and entertainment downtown. “Unfortunately, I think the building, while it looks maintained well from the outside, simply blends in, and is …

  Is it just us, or has the neighborhood corner grocery store gone the way of the dinosaur, replaced by big-chain convenience marts and big-box supermarkets? Consider Bucchin’s Superette, which until a couple of years ago, sold your common grocery staples – milk, bread, newspapers, lottery tickets, etc. – to the folks who live just west of the historic downtown, at Third Avenue and W. Broad Street. Now the property is closed, boarded up and posted for sale. Can a corner grocery make a comeback here? Or should something else happen with the property? What goes here, Bethlehem? Tell us in the …